I don’t raid either 10 or 25 man with any regularity. I will chose a 25 man for loot, and a 10 man for personalities, but I’m not invested in either. Generally I will take whichever is available.

I will say there is a general cultural “look down your nose” attitude towards players that prefer to run 10 man. “Not good enough” or “not smart enough” or “not dedicated enough” seem to be the underlying implied reason.

Can you tell any of this by looking at GS, EG or a *quick* armory check? Nope. Nobody is running around Dalaran belittling individual 10-man players. But read the blogs and forums and the attitude is VERY prevalent.
.-= SlikRX/Balthazario’s last blog: Wild Horses and Other Oddities =-.

It’s worth noting, when we (and by we I mean me and my guildies) initially set up pugs or “events” (acheivements, pvp tournaments, fun galas, etc) it’s fairly customary we look at the top 4-5 guilds first, and get friends. We don’t go to the “public”.

For example, we’re trying to finish up some Ulduar acheivements, on my server we’d fire off with /who Exigence, /who Reckoning… but we already know those are the same type of people to us. The people who care about this stuff.

In my eyes, this is kind of like a professional sport. The Miami Dolphins might have a strong rivalry with the New York Jets; but no matter how you slice it, both teams are going to respect each other. Someone on the Dolphins might not know a thing about the Arena Football League or heck even Basketball, but they’ll definitely know about the Jets.

Exodus has always fielded renown pvpers, trade-chat trolls, forum-monkies and of course done decently well in pve. We weren’t always #1, but when we weren’t, we were #2.

I strongly disagree with the “lol yeah right”. For me, there is a huge difference the guild tag makes in regards to alts. I honestly _do_ get the benefit of the doubt, I don’t need to link achievements, or gearscore or what not. I don’t often offer advice, but for the most part when I comment something about the healing-setup being inefficient or what not in pugs, I find they often tend to listen.

I think however, some of this has to do with how much good will your guild generates. For example, during the Sunwell era Exodus was legendary in propping up the price of Sunmotes. People were actively farming for sunmotes exclusively to sell to us because we were paying 2,000 gold for it. We also had a reputation of selling gear throughout Black Temple and even Sunwell.

Even in the age of Wrath, we organized pug runs (And at one point, we were organizing several pug runs). Like the other top guild on our server, we’ve also taught the pugs how to “do” certain bosses. We more or less openly shared our non-hardmode strategies. We’ve openly “taught” other guilds how to do fights (for example, we’ve taken several “officer cores” from about 2-3 guilds and showed them to Vashj fight when it was hard).

These aren’t my merits, but my guild has generated a good deal of good-will on the server. And as such, it’s definitely recognizable to a decent amount of people.

My other ‘issue’ has been that 25 man guilds can clear the 10 man content incredibly easily compared to those that don’t do 25 mans. However this relies on my perception – that it matters what other guilds do, that it’s not ‘fair’ that they get such a leg up when tackling 10 man content, or that it’s somehow important to distinguish between people who clear 10 man content with appropriate level gear and those who don’t. In the grand scheme of things none of that matters as long as I am happy within my guild and doing what I enjoy on WoW.

I’d assume that many 25 man raiders have similar types of issues (if coming from an opposite viewpoint) based on personal, subjective and relative perceptions, which are leading to more of the conflicting arguments than cold hard facts.

I get that what you are trying to say is that the impression of a 10-man raiding guild shouldn’t be any different from a 25. Honestly, my bad … but at the very least I made a point about people epeen chasing.

Let me clarify a little then by saying that the people who are chasing after “showing off” are also generally the people you don’t want in a serious progression raiding guild anyways …. the types that are constantly annoying and often pretty unskilled anyways.
.-= Gareth’s last blog: Where is my WoW going? =-.

Ok, prestige doesn’t matter in 10 man or 25 man. But when I read “if 10 man raiding guilds are looking for prestige and recognition they might not get it”, it sounds to me like trying to teach 10 man raiders that prestige and recognition doesn’t matter, when that isn’t the reason 10 man raiders want the raiding change to begin with.

I’ve gotten no end of comments on my blog from 25-man raiders who laugh that I cast anything other than rejuv and wild growth. Who laugh when I could make use of Nature’s Grace but couldn’t give up Living Seed for Celestial Focus, prior to getting closer to the haste softcap. Who are confused by the possibility that I might not have all the raid buffs in my raid, or might need to spam nourish on a tank in some boss fights while healing the raid at the same time. Who say, “why the heck would you want to only run tens?” Who often also say, “Tens are easy, you must suck.” It is born from ignorance, supported by their wish to feel better about themselves (bullying), and not quashed by the general community as a whole (though in turn, mostly due to lack of understanding or care).

It’s not all 25-man raiders who act like this, of course. Just a significant enough portion of them, enough so to be a constant thorn in the side of anyone who talks about ten-man raiding. The bullies and trolls are always out there for any topic, but most of the community and moderators don’t care enough (or understand) about ten-man raiders to do anything about it when those bullies start bashing on 10-man guilds. Ten-man guilds are a minority in WotLK: strats built for ten-man guilds are extremely rare–rarer than they should be–because all too often the IDEA of ten-man raiding is questioned or laughed at when these are posted on large sites.

TBH, I think ten-man guilds will still be behind 25mans in progression in Cataclysm due to Blizzard’s stated wish to have the 25-mans gear up more quickly overall. It doesn’t really bother me. Those looking for the firsts should be looking at 25-man guilds, simply due to that expected gearing speed… it’ll be the rare, exceptional 10-man guild on a server without world-top-ranking 25man guilds to get server firsts, same as it is now.

So, from my perspective, ten-man guilds just wish to be recognized as skilled (and, in some cases, as fair or good-hearted) players by other guilds, especially guilds held in high respect by the rest of the community… but as you say in your post, that recognition only really comes through conversations and actually playing together, rather than any rank, title, or gear graphic.